They sought to investigate how teams or collaborations were formed and whether allowing students to freely form teams also enhanced their engagement.
I'm interested in group dynamics and how influence spreads across networks. I look forward to reading further into the work of Liu, Chen, and Tai.
Results from these two studies demonstrate the different ways in which measures of centrality can be used to understand not only network shape but also how nodes within a network differ in relation to each other
Hi Ashlee, in your own research project which centrality measure do you think will be most useful in describing your network.
Meligy et al. introduced a very important metric to account for such a dynamic network… time intervals!
This seems like a pretty interesting way to study a network! I wish that I had the time to do something like this with one of my projects. I may put this in my toolbox later for when it's time to start organizing my practicum project.
The networks were studied for which measure of centrality really conveyed influence.
In your own research which measure of centrality do you think will be the most impactful when describing the relationships within your network?
Social network analysis is a great tool to understand organization communication and collaboration, therefore, enhancing the ability to make a high level community impact.
This is an interesting direction to take your project! Is there a specfic type of community service organization that you're interested in (i.e. youth advocacy, health, etc.)? Also, how do you plan to choose participants?
they can be used in the health field also when looking at infectious diseases and how they spread
I have thought of looking at SNA from this perspective. Now I can see how imperative SNA can be to the Public Health field.
Without even the possibility of the ability to obtain social capital via networking, it was extremely difficult for them to obtain the resources and information they need to find suitable employment.
•What do you think is the biggest road block to social capitol for individuals of SES?
Social capital helps in our daily lives because it gives us the ability to form relationships and connections, no matter how big or small with other people.
•In regards to your own research, in what ways do you think that you will be using/analyzing social capital?
Hence, social capital is analyzed by social network analysis (SNA) using metrics like degree, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality.
•How do you think these metrics would be best used when measuring an individual’s social capital? Do you think that they would also be effective with tracing the flow of social capital throughout a network?
Can SNA identify instances where this is happening and develop intervention to abate it?
•What kind of interventions do you think could be implemented to combat these kinds of inequity?
Research has shown that individuals that are more involved in school and community activities, work, and are married are less likely to engage in deviant behavior
-Do you think that this would be true across all forms of crime or would this be applied more to a certain level (i.e. misdemeanor vs felony, robbery vs murder, etc.)? Also it would interesting to see if leaders of organizations that engage in criminal activity possess similar levels of social capital to their counterparts on the other side of the law.
there is a consistent give and take associated with being more social, whereby you have to give up freedom and individual directives in collaborative or communitive relationships
-Social pressures that are created through the transaction of capital can have various impacts on an individual. I believe that it is these pressures that reinforce cultural norms but I wonder if this is always healthy.
It’s not that we aren’t bowling alone, I’d rather say that our culture has just shifted on to different sports like basketball and other sports that require team communication. And there are even e-sports (aka electronic sports) nowadays.
Patrick I completely agree with you, we are constantly exploring new avenues for social interaction. The game may have changed but people are still playing and finding ways to connect with others.
Saying that either weak or strong ties are more important is a complicated and situational issue.
In your own social network would you that you have a higher number of weak or strong connections? Do you personally believe that one has more of an influence on you than the other?
This helps to facilitate interorganizational connections among non-profits and help find the right community partners they need in the future.
From a business perspective, once to organizations begin engaging in a partnership would you still consider them to be weak ties? Or would their relationship transform into a strong one? How do you think we most appropriately measure the strength of these ties?
I personally believe that weak ties are more important than strong ties because they remove us from our “bubble
I know the reading states specifically that weak ties are the ones that provide us with variety in our networks. Do you however believe that is possible our strong ties to also provide us with the noted opportunities for enrichment?
The concept of the six degrees on separation did not take into consideration how peoples’ abilities to connect varies from person to person.
Every time I read something about the six degrees of separation I think of these individuals you're speaking of. These are the disconnected nodes that we've seen in some of the networks that we've observed thus far.
Strong ties and weak ties are both important because everyone has both.
Do you think that everyone truly has both forms of ties? What about individuals who choose to seclude themselves? They may have been born into vast social networks but would you still say that they are connected if they choose to metaphorically burn all their bridges?
Kadushin (2011) warns that these weak ties have the danger of exposing us to more people than we desire to be exposed to
You mentioned that there were dangers associated with the presence of weak ties. What do you think are some possible disadvantages to these weak ties?
The removal of an average weak tie would do more damage to transmission probabilities than would that of an average strong tie
Do you believe that this is true in ever network? Or are weaker ties more influential in some contexts than in others?
ecause we are still scratching the surface of modern social network analysis.
Hey Patrick, what do you think is the future of SNA?
but make the predictive modeling a challenge in SNA
Hi Courtney, how do you think we as SN analyzers can best combat this challenge?
bias
How do you think we can combat this major limitation?
Relational data
Do you think that SNA is more beneficial when conducting descriptive or predictive
I have a group of individuals that I interact with when I am at work, but I have a different and very distinct group that I interact with outside of work
Hey Ndaesha, how does your work group differ from your outside of work group? Are you actively engaged in the decision making process or does it just kind of happen? One more question, what are some key factors that go into your decision making process of who makes it in to each kind of group? Does the not work group have drastically different attributes than the work?
Social identity theory helps us understand the consequences of homophily.
Do you think that there are advantages to homophilly in today’s society?
hances are, most of us follow these norms without even realizing because they are so ingrained into who we are.
Hi Thomas, you stated that the information that passes through the network is what sets and reinforces norms. What do you think are the primary change agents? Do you subscribe to the nature vs. nurture argument? Or do you think that the tendency to “fall in line” is a survival mechanism?
t’s not necessarily the people that change a behavior, but it is the norm or the idea that becomes socially acceptable and reverberates through the network
Courtney,
What do you think are some possible implications of this kind of norming?
This would lead one to believe that everyone’s voice would have an equal chance of being “heard” online, but this is not the case.
What process do you think one would have to go through to increase the volume of their voice on the internet? Do you think that increased presence would lead to increased risk?
a group with highly transitivity
Do you think that there is a formative moment when working with a set of people that the network which once had a weak connection becomes one that is strong. How do you think we operationalize the strength of a connection? Would have to be defined by the group or would it be based on the perspective of each individual group member?
Thomas,
Now that you're aware this 3 degree of separation theory are you able to look back and think of anytime when you may have personal been influenced by some other than those in your two immediate degrees of social interaction?
Educational Psychology
Hi Ashlee! Educational psychology sounds like an interesting course of study. What are your plans for when you finish up your program?
my last class as a student
Congrats on being so close to the completion of your program! Do you plan to continue in research or take on a more applied position?
Week #1
I'm super excited to be making my first annotation here! I look forward to making many more in the near future.